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Raymond Stenger
Chairman of the Board
Ray Stenger works with the chief science officer in the development of SWAPSOL intellectual property. Ray’s career has been centered in business development, environmental consulting and the management of private companies engaged in these activities. Ray also serves as a member of the Board of Directors of Conklin Marketing, Inc (CMI), and it was through Ray’s involvement with CMI that Ray and Jim began working closely together.
Ray Stenger has received a U.S. Patent for a Closed Vent Bioreactor System (1993, U.S Patent No. 5,258,303), founded and operated Stenger Associates, Inc., an Environmental Consulting firm (1987-1995) and co-founded Envirotactics, Inc., an Environmental Consulting firm where he served from 1995 to 2007.
Earlier in his career, Stenger was a process engineer at Diamond Alkali (1959-1965). In 1965, he became senior process engineer with Stephan Chemical where he was involved in converting black strap molasses to citric acid. From 1967 to 1971, he worked as chief process engineer at Stauffer Chemical's Louisville Works, one of the largest chlorinated solvent plants in the United States. Following Stauffer Chemical, Stenger was chief process engineer and subsequently plant manager with the Philadelphia Quartz Company from 1971 to 1981. In 1981, he co-founded LOMA Environmental, an environmental consulting and remediation firm.
Stenger earned his bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from West Virginia University in 1957. He served in the U.S. Army Chemical Warfare Unit, working with VX nerve gas. He is currently the treasurer for the Princeton Chapter of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.
Wolf Koch, Ph.D. (SWAPSOL
Board)
President & CEO
President, Technology Resources International, Inc.
Sterling, IL
Wolf Koch managed technology development programs for over three decades on environmental, safety and intellectual properties issues related to petroleum product distribution. He managed petrochemical and petroleum processing technology development for a major oil company and has collaborated with regulatory agencies at the Federal, State and local levels and with industry groups and associations. Wolf has been a Professor of Chemical Engineering and spent 15 years in an adjunct capacity teaching undergraduate and graduate chemical and mechanical engineering courses. He is the inventor or co-inventor on 26 patents and has authored over 40 publications covering topics in biomedical engineering, catalysis, environmental engineering and intellectual properties. Wolf holds Ph.D. and bachelor degrees in chemical engineering and a master’s degree in biomedical engineering. He served as a Captain in the U.S. Air Force, four years as a weapons and explosives safety officer in Germany and six years as a reservist in the Air Force Intelligence Service, covering technology issues for the Foreign Technology Division.
Randa Fahmy-Hudome (SWAPSOL Board)
President
Fahmy-Hudome Int'l, Wash., D.C.
Randa Fahmy-Hudome is a recognized expert in both the energy sector and international affairs. Her professional career of more than two decades spans service in both the Executive and Legislative branches of the U.S. government, as well as in the private sector. She is President of Fahmy-Hudome International (FHI), a strategic consulting firm based in Washington, D.C. that provides advisory services to an elite group of international and domestic clients. Prior to founding FHI, she served as the Associate Deputy Secretary of Energy in the Administration of President George W. Bush. From 1995-2001, she served on Capitol Hill as Foreign Policy Counselor to Senator Spencer Abraham (R-MI), where she was instrumental in shaping legislation affecting U.S. interests abroad. She earned her J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center and has practiced law with the New York law firm of Willkie, Farr and Gallagher.
Robert Cohen (SWAPSOL
Board)
Managing Partner, Benson Oak
Prague, Czech Republic
Mr. Cohen is Managing Partner of Benson Oak Capital (BOC), a private equity fund which provides financing for buyouts and expansion capital with a focus on middle market companies in the Czech and Slovak Republics. He has 15 years experience in private equity, investment banking and financial advisory activities and currently manages the operations of BOC. He previously managed Benson Oak's corporate finance advisory business.
BOC was originally founded in 1991, advising on over EUR6 billion in debt and equity financing transactions. Mr. Cohen has participated in numerous transactions in the Central European region, including loan, bond, multilateral and equity financings for Czech Airport Authority, CEZ (Czech power company), Unipetrol (petrochemicals and oil refinery), and Czech Railways.
BOC's current investments include AVG Technologies, a global security solutions leader protecting more than 80 million users in 167 countries. Mr. Cohen has served on AVG's Board since 2003 and handled all strategic financing issues for the company from 2004 until late 2005. Mr. Cohen is actively involved with the boards of all BOC investments.
Mr. Cohen has a Master's Degree in International Affairs from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and a Bachelor's Degree from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business.
James Buccini (SWAPSOL
Board)
Partner, Redding Consultants
Basking Ridge, NJ
James Buccini is a partner in Connecticut-based management firm Redding Consultants. Buccini's expertise includes product and technology commercialization, merger integration, operations, marketing, supply chain, and commodity risk management. Since 2001, he has led major strategy and performance improvement projects at Redding for a wide range of industrial and consumer product clients. Buccini also has extensive international leadership experience, including lengthy in-country assignments in China, Brazil, Romania, England, and Luxembourg.
Buccini was previously a principal of the global management firm, A.T. Kearney, Inc. Prior to this, he served as a senior executive for Koch Industries Inc., the largest privately held corporation in the United States. There, he served as vice president of structured products trading for Koch's Petroleum Group; president and managing director of John Zink Europe, Koch's process equipment business based in Luxembourg; and served as director of Koch's 20+ person internal management consulting group.
He began his career at UOP LLC, now a subsidiary of Honeywell, and has also served on corporate boards in the United States and Europe.
Buccini holds an MBA from The University of Chicago – Booth School of Business with a specialization in marketing and a bachelor's in chemical engineering from the Polytechnic University of New York.
Conrad Isoldi
EVP, CFO, Treasurer, Secretary
Spring Lake, NJ
Conrad Isoldi is an independent management consultant with more than 40 years experience across the financial, banking and regulatory industries where he has held key management positions in both financial and non-financial organizations. He is an expert in developing and implementing key strategies, along with their underlying tactics to meet company goals.
Among Isoldi's many roles in the financial and banking industry, he is former SVP, CAO of Medallion Financial Corporation where he managed the finance, technology, operations and human resources functions to provide the support and direction of the company. Isoldi also designed the company program to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley regulations. In addition, As SVP, Dir of Corp. Accounting at First Fidelity Corp (now Wachovia), he led a financial team that integrated more than 18 acquired institutions over a four-year timeframe.
Isoldi holds a B.B.A. in accounting from Bernard Baruch College.
James Wasas
CSO
Jim Wasas is chief science officer for SWAPSOL, Corp. During the last several years he has spent his efforts along with co-founder Ray Stenger on developing the SWAP, a unique process that reacts CO2 in the presence of H2S, converting the pair to carbon, sulfur, water and carsuls – a carbon-sulfur compound that may find application in materials development.
Over the years, Wasas has designed, constructed and provided operator training of three gold refineries for U.S. companies and seven gold and silver refineries for Ecuadoran companies, including one that produced aerospace grade 99.9999 percent pure gold.
Wasas is a former head of the Research and Development division of Geevor, PLC where he invented a chemical process for recovering refractory gold from metallic ores native to Ecuador.
Wasas earned his bachelor of arts degree in chemistry from Rutgers University in 1968 and served as a captain in the U.S. Army, stationed both in Japan and Thailand.
Wasas is member of the American Chemical Society.
the story of the SWAP
Like so many iconic invention stories, theirs began in a garage, when environmental engineer Ray Stenger and entrepreneur chemist Jim Wasas formed a partnership. Together they would unearth a profound scientific discovery – a breakthrough with the ability to convert and significantly reduce industrial carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and change the world’s energy trajectory for the next 100 years.
Stenger and Wasas first met in 2002 during a networking event in Asbury Park, N.J. Stenger was an engineer focused on environmental cleanup; Wasas was a gold extraction specialist and had founded a liqueur company that marketed a brand he developed while living and working in Ecuador. Over time, the men became friends, regularly discussed chemistry, industry and finding the ways to live better through science. The May 2006 release of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” sparked yet another conversation between the two – the issue of greenhouse gases, CO2 and climate change. With two parts oxygen – shouldn’t CO2 be considered an oxidizing agent? Their conversation quickly became a brainstorming session.
Their scientific strong suits were symbiotic – Stenger was interested in “recombinant” science, or taking things apart and putting them back together. Wasas’ strength was “catalysis” and “extraction” science, or separating compounds. They paired their thoughts, and the foundation of the Stenger-Wasas Process (SWAP) was laid.
Stenger had extensive experience with elemental sulfur, having worked at the Army’s Chemical Research Center in Maryland. He knew that as a solid, sulfur is tame. But when liquefied, it becomes aggressive and combative. He had a theory that hot sulfur would attack CO2 and turn it into Sulfur Dioxide (SO2), and that solid carbon would precipitate out. Wasas’ expertise in extraction science armed him with the background to help identify a reacting agent. Together, they knew the answer hid beneath the facts.
Wasas had much of the proper laboratory equipment in his basement in Point Pleasant Beach, N.J. They spent a few hundred dollars on additional items and together, having no idea what they were about to uncover, they converted Wasas’ garage into an ad hoc laboratory. Early thermodynamic calculations indicated the possibility of a reaction between CO2 and gaseous sulfur at very high temperatures, but they decided that this was impractical. They needed to identify a substance that contained the requisite potency to react with and decompose the CO2. It would need to be abundant and inexpensive, maybe even free.
More than a year of experimentation, seven-day workweeks and multiple
failures finally led them to hydrogen sulfide and their stroke
of genius – an inexpensive, long-lived, self-cleaning catalyst.
The beauty of the SWAP is both its simplicity and the scope of
its applications. The SWAP can permanently remove carbon from
the carbon cycle by converting it into stable, industrially valuable
solids and liquids. The SWAP could make carbon capture profitable
in sales to the oil and gas industry, impacting other carbon-emitters
including coal-fired power, waste management, manufacturing,
agriculture, aerospace and construction. Simply put, the SWAP
significantly reduces trash by marrying industries that produce
CO2 and industries that produce
H2S — oil and gas refiners.
The SWAP addresses the most important challenges of our time through
a newly-discovered field of chemistry, what Stenger and Wasas
call the “Global Sulfur Cycle” to reduce or eliminate
humanity’s impact on climate change while solving the world’s
energy crisis.
In a New Jersey garage, Jim Wasas and Ray Stenger discovered how
to convert and eliminate CO2,
opening the door to a new energy economy.
It’s time to rewrite the chemistry textbooks.
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